a fellow how to tie his cravat, recipes he can follow for boot polish, but shaving must be demonstrated.”
Sycamore chose the worst possible time to try for subtlety—of course. “I am scheduled to begin figuratively pummeling the local bully in fifteen minutes, and now you recite ancient history?” Though Ash had the sense that whatever point Sycamore was dancing up to mattered.
“Casriel was there one day, he was off to school the next. We still had tutors and nannies on every hand, but Casriel—the best of us—got sent away. He reappeared a few months later, but he wasn’t the same. He had chums besides us. He spoke of things I could not understand. Rugger and lights out and tossing boys in a blanket. I felt like somebody had stolen my best brother.”
I am your best brother. “I missed him too.”
“But you grasped that he’d be back. Nobody told me he was ever coming back. I thought I’d lost him for good.”
And being Sycamore, he’d kept that horrible fear all to himself.
“Mama left the room if I happened to blunder into her parlor,” Sycamore said. “Papa took off for his blighted walking tours and was gone for weeks. He kept threatening to go to South America, and all I knew as a small boy was that South America was full of crocodiles and jungles. I was barely breeched, and my papa would rather wrestle crocodiles than read me a story.”
“He didn’t go.” Not a helpful observation, but Ash hardly knew what to say.
“Nobody told me it was all just idle talk, Ash. Then Will went off to school, Mama began her dramas in earnest, Jacaranda staged her revolt, Papa died, and I know exactly why Lady Della sometimes feels as if she dwells in the middle of a never-ending maelstrom nobody else can see.”
Ash had not explained that aspect of Della’s situation to Sycamore, but Cam had divined it for himself.
Sycamore spoke calmly, while a tear trickled down his cheek. “I am not wild, my family is wild. I just do the best I can, and then my only sensible brother, the only real brother I have, the fellow who notices that some things need explaining, goes off to read law. I’m not smart like you, Ash. I cannot read law by the hour and comprehend any of it. I tried university because you expected it of me, but I failed at that too. It’s as if, having been raised on a steady diet of mayhem, I cannot abide any routine. I sound daft.”
Ash took the place beside Sycamore at the balcony, when he wanted to tackle his brother and start a rousing and completely pointless round of fisticuffs. Gentle fisticuffs, if such a thing existed.
“You are actually making sense for the first time in years, Cam, which ought to be grounds to raise the general alarum. Allow me to hazard a theory, and please do not pitch me into the rosebushes for stating my conjectures.”
“Della would pummel me for raising my hand to you.”
“You long for a good pummeling from a pretty lady. My theory goes as follows: You are outrageous in an effort to ensure I will not lose sight of you. If this is the case, I commend your strategy, because it has worked.” And why had Ash never seen such an obvious connection before?
Sycamore produced a little gold cloisonné box with a dove enameled on the lid, opened it with an elegant flick of his fingers, and offered Ash a mint. “To clear the taste of that punch from your mouth.”
Ash took the mint because Sycamore was buying himself time to regain his composure.
“I don’t set out to be outrageous,” he said. “I am simply myself, and the results are outrageous.”
“A fine dodge, Sycamore, but not fine enough. Horses do not decide to race each other. The riders declare the challenge and decide the course.”
Sycamore put away his pretty little box, which, if Ash guessed correctly, had once belonged to their mother.
“I have wondered,” Sycamore said ever so casually, “if you don’t suffer the mulligrubs simply because you need to get away from me.”
And there it was, the signature Cam Dorning punch to the gut, delivered without warning and carrying an ungodly sting.
“I have little control over my melancholia, Cam. If I had wanted to get away from you, I’d simply have taken an apartment at the Albany, assigned managers to handle my jobs at the Coventry, and reserved my encounters with you for Hyde Park’s bridle